Marvel And ComiXology Try A Revised Offer For 700 Free #1s

So last month, Marvel and ComiXology had an awesome giveaway of 700 Marvel #1 comics and fans went wild with excitement, so much excitement that ComiXology’s site nearly crashed and and the company had to apologize.

For those of us who didn’t get a chance to get all the #1 comics that we wanted, the two companies are doing it again. Call it a second chance if you will as they are again offering 700 free #1 issues through the Marvel Comics app and through Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop. However this second chance comes with some stipulations so listen up. You have until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday night to sign up for an account through a promotional page so you can access the goods.

Once you sign up through the page, you’ll see this message:

Congratulations and thank you! You have signed up to get access to over 700 free comics through Marvel #1!

Starting Thursday, April 11th, 2013, we will begin notifying waves of fans by email to provide redemption instructions and let them know when they can access the Marvel #1 offer.

Don’t worry if your email doesn’t arrive on April 11th. As long as you signed up by April 9, 2013, you will receive your email soon! We want to make sure we get to all our fans so that they have the best experience possible.

Looks like ComiXology are taking preventative measures so users don’t slam the service all at once this time. An email confirming registration for the promotion says that fans will have 48 hours to download the #1 issues that they want should they accept this mission. Looks like I’m signing up. I wonder if the comics are the same 700 that they were offering before or are these a different set? Do you guys think ComiXology’s site will crash or run smoothly this time?

3 Responses

Whether it runs smoothly or not the server crash should have been a wake up call about calling these things “giveaways” or “buying”. Comixology is not giving anything away but access which they can take away when ever they want. You don’t own anything when you “buy” a comic from them you are paying for access thats all. Unlike music or even novels which you actually get files you can back up and do what you want with you get access on the whim of Comixology. How many people lost access to other books that “purchased” that nothing to do with the marvel #1’s. What happen’s if 3 years from now Marvel for whatever reason decided to cut ties with comixology and you were “buying” Superior Spiderman the whole time you would then lost access to those book you “purchased”. As Far as I am concerned it’s false advertisement to be putting “buy” next to something that you won’t actually own and can be taken away on whim.
I mean it would be the same as the comic book store coming to my house and grabbing a longbox off my shelf and saying these aren’t yours anymore.
This model needs to change it’s crazy at the very least they need to stop misrepresenting what they doing by calling “buying” and change it to renting because that is what you are doing is renting indefinately

Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to try to take advantage of this offer once again but the excitement has definitely died down considerably. It’s been over a month and I feel like what started as a good will gesture from Marvel is serving as a realization of how fragile the “purchasing” of digital comics can be. I know we’re talking about free comics here but as Col. Forbin said, people were locked out of their paid books as well.

I’m sure once this is all said and done it’ll be a positive step forward in getting new and old readers to digital books but Comixology should be addressing the more important concern about the ownership of purchased material.